Page 124 of Modern Romance September 2025 1-4

‘But you still saw what you wanted to see—what youexpectedto see—and jumped to the easiest conclusion because all you see me as is a sex-mad Lothario who would cheat on his pregnant wife at the first opportunity.’

‘No!’

‘Yes.In your eyes I’m just Alexis Tsaliki, the commitment-shy Lucifer who can’t be trusted to keep his trousers on when a beautiful woman catches his eye.’

‘You never promised to be faithful to me.’

‘Yes, I did.’

‘You didnot! When I said I wouldn’t waste my breath in asking it of you, youlaughed.’

‘“I promise you love, honour and respect; to befaithful to you, and not to forsake you until death do us part”,’ he ground out. ‘To befaithfulto you. I made that promise to you in front of witnesses and God.’

‘But you didn’t mean it!’ she cried. ‘You never once said you were going to take our vows seriously.’

‘Because I knew you wouldn’t believe me—in my world, actions speak louder than words, and I’d hoped, by proving myself a true and faithful husband to you, that you’d learn to trust me and believe in me, but as I’ve learned with you, I’m damned whatever I do. You don’t want to believe in me.’

‘I do, of course I do, you’re the father of my child, and it’s all well and good saying that actions speak louder than words but your track record… You don’thavea track record! You’ve never sustained a relationship with a woman in the whole of your adult life! For heaven’s sake, Alexis, you were only in a position to marry me in the first place because either you or the woman you came close to committing to got cold feet within weeks.’

‘What the hell are you talking about?’

‘The woman you were going to marry! The one you made the changes in your bedroom for! That happened weeks and weeks before we married and can only have lasted five minutes because I lost count of the number of women you were pictured with after I left your bed.’

The laughter that followed this landed like nails on a chalkboard to Lydia’s ears. Shaking his head, his face twisted in something that could be either a smile or a grimace, he swirled the liquid in his glass before throwing it down his throat, and then he reached for the bottle of brandy, refilled the glass and took another large drink of it.

The smiling grimace was still alive on his face when his eyes next locked onto hers. ‘It was you.’

‘What was?’

‘The woman I was planning to marry. It was you, Lydia. It was always you.’

CHAPTER TWELVE

THE ROOM WAS SPINNING, Alexis’s face a sudden blur, the noise in Lydia’s head deafening.

‘You’re drunk,’ she whispered uncertainly.

‘Not yet, but by the end of this night I hope to be.’ He winked, raised his glass to her, and drank half of what remained in it. Wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, he gave another of those awful laughs. ‘Did you not listen to me when I said I didn’t want to be like my father? Or when I told you on the night we agreed to marry that marriage is not a game to be played with? I’ve seen too much pain and hurt caused by marriage vows taken in vain to ever play that game. I always knew I would settle down when the woman I could see myself growing old with came into my life, but I wasn’t prepared to string women along and ruin lives until I found her.’ The ugly smile faded into starkness. ‘I found her three months ago.’

Her thumping heart jumped into her throat.

‘Something happened between us that weekend, Lydia, and I know you felt it too, and I don’t just mean the sex.’

She shrank into herself, remembering the way they’d parted. Remembering, too, how much it had hurt to walk away. ‘But…that can’t be true…you were horrible and dismissive to me.’

He held her stare. ‘Have you never heard of pride?’

Blood was whooshing through her head, a roar of noise that made it impossible to think coherently, impossible to take in what he was saying.

‘When you left…’ He swore and drained his glass. ‘I couldn’t get you out of my mind.’ He tapped his temple. ‘You were in here. Everywhere I went. It was like you’d possessed me. I kept hearing your laughter and smelling your perfume and I knew there was no way I could spend the rest of my life without you in it. That’s why I proposed a marriage between our families—the truce was just a smokescreen. I didn’t even need it. Tsaliki Shipping had already weathered the worst of the storm of bad publicity.’

‘But if you…’

‘I proposed a marriage between you and me.’

She shook her head, not in disagreement but in disbelief. ‘No. That can’t be true.’ It had always been Thanasis and Lucie…hadn’t it?

‘Ask your brother.’ That awful, awful laugh rang through her ears again. ‘He turned me down flat. Looked at me as if I were the devil reincarnate for even suggesting I marry you. I think that was the point when I really understood why you’d had to walk away from me. That war between our fathers…it poisoned everything but it poisoned your family most of all.’